Fitting Pants Is a Pain in the

place where the pants are supposed to fit.

I've been working on the pants with the pickpocket-proof pocket. Although I had to reinvent the pocket, it went together well. The front zipper also went in smoothly. The front was done.

Then I made the pants backs. Darts. That's about it.

The moment of truth: Sewing the front and back legs together. Sewing the crotch seam.

The trouble always starts here. They didn't fit. AARGH!!!!

In 2006 I perfected the perfect pants pattern. Then as a result of my exercise program, I lost some hip fluff. So last year I readjusted the pattern. I was sure it would fit (I haven't changed size.) but I was confused by the notes on the pattern pieces. They listed slacks made in my less svelte period. Was this last year's pattern? Or an old one? If it was the old one, where in the world was the new pattern? Dumb questions. It was the old one. Time for the adjustments to begin.

Just last week my Co-Granny asked if I made all my slacks. I make nearly all of them. If I have a good pattern, I can make pants that fit faster than I can find pants that fit in a store. But I need my good pattern, which apparently is now located in Someplace Else.

Now I'm not a really weird size, but I am short. There's no sense in euphemisms. I'm shorter than petite, but my weight is in the right range for my height.

Honestly, I don't think that many women who are in my age group--older than Barbie--have an easy time finding pants that fit well. A couple of years ago, the Renegade Militant Seamstresses drafted pants patterns using the directions from a Nationally Known Sewing Instructor. The process involved stripping down to our skivvies, taking numerous measurements, doing complicated mathematics, drawing with yardsticks and T-squares on large sheets of paper taped together, and laughing a lot. I think one of the seamstresses came out with a usable pattern. Who knows where the rest of us went wrong? Measuring, calculating, drawing? The only thing to do was to laugh some more.

I wasn't laughing that much last night, but I've got the situation under control today. I adjusted all the darts, the side seams, the crotch seam, the leg width, and just about anything else that could be adjusted. More than once. Now I'm ready for the waistband and belt loops.

These pants are intended to have a relaxed fit, to leave room for the pickpocket-proof pocket to hold what a pickpocket might want to pick. I'll put elastic in the waistband so there is a little give and attach a loop to hold my pedometer on.

I've got to rework the pattern. Because fitting pants is a pain in the patootie!

Very Cool, Very Warm Mittens!

These are my new very cool, very warm mittens. They are made from a felted wool and angora sweater. The lining is fleece. And they are very, very warm.

These mittens were the latest project of the Renegade Militant Seamstresses. Wendy and Lorraine showed us how to make them. They were not really hard to make.

The former sweater was a soft and lovely cable-knit turtleneck. I wore it with a brown skirt. Then one summer there was an unfortunate incident with the skirt and I was unable to wear it to work any more. That incident involved my hips and a Tommy Turtle sundae. It's too horrible to think about.

So, inspired by my daughter, I machine washed and dried the sweater. It came out very small, about a foot in length and two feet in circumference, just barely big enough to make two mittens. Jan let me use some of her lightweight royal purple fleece for lining. The fleece I had was too thick.

I'm thinking about making some more mittens with this pattern. I have some windblock Polar Fleece in the basement, but not enough to make any sort of garment. That would make really warm mittens. I'd use the windblock fleece on the outside and some thinner fleece on the inside.

One of the Seamstresses mentioned that the mitten pattern would work for oven mitts. Hmmm... 100% wool would not conduct heat and is fire resistant. It sounds like another project. I guess I'll have to go thrift store shopping.

Renegade Militant Seamstresses, part 3, or the completion of the sweatshirt jackets

Ta-da! This is the first completed raw edge, collaged sweatshirt jacket. It is Wendy's. She used a variety of blue fabrics. Many of them had bits of brown, so she used brown flannel as binding for a suede look. I think it looks great!


This is mine, with an unidentified body inside. To quote Nora Efron, "I feel bad about my neck." It seems to me that the neck--I mean the neckline--is again too large for me. I'm thinking about adding a stand-up collar to this one, too. Of course, another option would be to increase my exercise regimen until I have the neck and shoulders of a football player. Ok, never mind. I'll keep thinking about the collar.
This is a close-up of the fabrics after the sweatshirt had been washed. You can see a little of the texture that develops. Many of the fabrics were from Northcott's Quest for the Cure collection from a few years ago.

Renegade Militant Seamstresses, part 2

The Renegade Militant Seamstresses met last week to take the next step in their raw-edge, collage sweatshirt jackets. This is a really fun group, and in keeping with the "renegade" nature, not everyone worked on sweatshirts. See the nearly finished spiral bracelet above. It will go with her sweatshirt.

We didn't quite get finished, but everyone should be able to complete the jackets at home. This one features seamstresses.
One person added a side seam pocket. You can see the quilting from the wrong side if you enlarge this photo.
How about this for a beginner's project? Beautiful soft colors and fabrics with a special meaning.
And here's one finished except for the binding. Just made to wear with jeans. Note the black and white patchwork sweatshirt she's wearing.
I've got the binding almost sewn on mine. It came to a temporarily halt when my machine needle broke. Not a big problem, but I can take a hint. Time to stop for the day. I'll get it done tomorrow or the next day. The final step will be to machine wash and dry the jackets so the sweatshirts shrink up, giving a soft, rumpled look. And then trim off any loose threads. And then vacuum up the threads. Or not.

Renegade Militant Seamstresses

The Renegade Militant Seamstresses met yesterday to start on their raw edge collage sweatshirt jackets.
We'll finish at our October gathering.

This is a lively, enthusiastic group with lots of creative ideas they are willing to share.


Since we were at first to have only one session to work together, I prepared three pages of instructions and four pages of extremely artistic diagrams. Watch out, Leonardo!



Writing up the instructions was made easier with the magic of spell check which found all the places I had inadvertently typed "swearshirt." Freud is looking into this situation.



These are some pictures of the works in progress.


You can see the differences in fabrics and colors the Seamstresses chose.



Sometimes we just needed a little caffeine.

Not quite so classic black and white:


Everyone has a month of homework before we come back in October to finish the jackets.

To see the intended result, look at some of my earlier posts.

St. Gregory's Abbey

Yesterday I went to St. Gregory's Abbey with members of the GR sewing guild. Seven monks live at this Episcopal Benedictine Abbey near Three Rivers.

They have quite a collection of beautifully decorated vestments. The monk who is in charge of them was very generous in showing us the amazing items.

The first three pictures are of a stole from the sixteenth or seventeenth century. The embroidery is all done in various metallic threads. The intricacy of the stitching is unbelievable. The metallic threads have tarnished and dulled over time, and you can see that the silk fabric is quite frayed. Still it was quite something to see.

The other pieces we saw are much more modern--from the 20th century. Most of the elaborate embroidery was done by one person, Sister Scholastica, who is now deceased.

The photos are primarily from stoles and chasubles which are worn at different times in the church calendar.

Enjoy the pictures! And does anyone know the trick to getting the photos to be oriented in the right direction? I figured out that they always go with the longer way vertical and the shorter way horizontal. Is there a way to work with this?

Project Progress

I'm making progress on the raw edge collage sweatshirt jacket. After preparing the sweatshirt and cutting the fabric pieces, I placed them randomly on the sweatshirt front and back. After a little bit of rearranging and removing most of the pieces with a lot of white, I pinned the patches on the sweatshirt.

That's where I got stuck. I had used all my straight pins on the front and the back and had none left to pin the patches on the sleeves. Now the other time I did this, I used glue stick to attach the patches to the sweatshirt. I didn't think that worked too well. The more I handled the sweatshirt, the more the patches came off. Glue stick doesn't hold up well to the stretching of the foundation fabric. So I resorted to pins. This time I started with pins, but I didn't have enough for the entire sweatshirt.

I decided to go ahead and zigzag around all the patches on the front and the back before starting on the sleeves. Zigzagging around these patches is not the most exciting part of the project. It took several hours to do the front and several more hours to do the back.

Then I pinned the patches on the sleeves and started sewing them on. It's a couple of hours per sleeve. I just have a little more to do on the second sleeve.

I'm pleased with the combination of fabrics. Many of them came from Northcott Fabric's Quest for the Cure collection for several different years. I'm glad I took the whiter patches off.

I just have to get this finished enough for Thursday's meeting of the Renegade Militant Seamstresses. I think I'm going to have to go to the fabric store to get some sweatshirt fabric to make some small step-by-step prototypes.

A New Project

I'm working on a new project, or maybe I should say another project. It's a replica of this raw edge collage sweatshirt jacket I made in 2004. I've had more comments on this jacket than on anything else I've made. I've even been stalked while wearing it! Ok, maybe stalking is too strong a word for someone following me around in a fabric store or a quilt show...

All this for what was kind of a "throw away" project. I just wanted to figure out how these things were made so I went at it. And the collar, which seems to be of such interest, was made using the "Necessity is the Mother of Invention" method.

This is what the surface of the jacket looks like:




Anyway, I agreed to show the Renegade Militant Seamstresses how to make one, so I am making what will be a partially completed example.

The trick has been to remember how I made the first jacket it so I can put together a handout. I'm pleased to say that I am remembering more than I expected.

I'm making the new one in blue. Here are the fabrics:



You can see the blue color of the base sweatshirt on the lower center to right edge. I got it at 80% off in the men's department of a chain store. Must have been too girly a color to sell...

Now I'm arranging my patches on the sweatshirt. The first major decision point is what to do with the fabrics that have a lot of white. They look awfully white on the sweatshirt. At this point, I think I will take them off and substitute ones with more blue.

And then what to do with the already cut patches I won't use? Another project?

Floating Tucks Portfolio

I finally finished the Floating Tucks Portfolio I started at the Grand Rapids ASG embellishment workshop in mid-July. Pretty impressive that I finished it so quickly, considering the number of in process projects currently cluttering up the Room Eventually to Be Known as the Room Formerly Known as Pink.

I surprised myself by choosing primary colors instead of something elaborate and beaded. That decision was influenced by the notebook I found to cover. I decided I wanted the paper inside to coordinate with the cover.

The tucks (vertical in this picture) stitched with #12 Sulky variegated thread in primary colors in both the top thread and the bobbin. I had not used the heavy thread in both before, and I was pleased with the results. I used the edge stitching foot to keep the tucks the same size. The horizontal stitching pulls the tucks in alternate directions. The #12 thread is used in the top but not in the bobbin. I made a fabric bead to simulate a button closure.



This is the inside of the portfolio. You can't see in this photo that the yellow paper is actually graph paper. Great for those of us who need all the help we can get in drawing diagrams.

The colors of the outside and the lining are really much closer than they look in the photos. But they are not a perfect match. That's the reason for the green piping. With that little separation, they look the same. I auditioned the green as binding, but it grabbed all the attention, and the effect of the variegated thread on the outside was lost.

The directions called for a Velcro closure, but I only had black and white Velcro. Then I decided to paint some white Velcro with blue Dye-na-Flow. That actually worked well. But it's scratchy. So in the end, I chose to do a little deconstruction so I could slip the reinforcements for a magnetic snap between the layers.

This portfolio is modified from "Wrap It To Go" from Fons and Porter's Easy Quilts, Fall 2007.

Now if anyone knows how to rearrange the photos and wrap the text, please let me know!

Marty S